Rising algorithms: The threats and opportunities AI poses to the arts

As the number of satellites grows over the next decade, it’s predicted that the darkest part of the night sky will become 7.5 percent brighter. 

This means, says artist and activist Julian Oliver, an ever increasing reduction in celestial events humanity gets to observe. 

This week and next Oliver is using technology embedded in a modified telescope to present artwork ‘The Closed World’ in Ponēke Wellington. Through the telescope viewers see a convincing yet entirely fabricated cosmos, created using machine learning techniques. 

The growth in satellites are a tangible, visible manifestation of the way machines are increasingly being used for the advancement of the way we live, but at the same time obscure can real connections with the world around us and each other.

Oliver's 'The Closed World' asks us to consider whether we can even tell the difference between a fabricated starscape and a natural one. It's a neat way of illustrating some of the dilemmas that artificial intelligence poses. It’s artificial, but does it matter? In enhancing our world, what dangers are there in AI ultimately distancing us from nature?  Closing our world in, under the control of unseen others, rather than opening it up.

In Pōneke Wellington this week artists, technologists, and critical thinkers have been exploring together questions around machine learning and artificial intelligence. They’ve gathered as part of Rising Algorithms: Navigate, Automate, Dream, a symposium produced by the Aotearoa Digital Arts Network, or ADA for short, which also features exhibitions in Poneke at The Engine Room Massey University The chronicle of <a new love order>, and the new Null Gallery in Arthur Street (until 12 June).

ADA is asking: can technology solve the problems of our time or is it merely exacerbating them? And how are artists in Aotearoa employing machine learning and navigating this shifting landscape?

Artificial Intelligence raises plenty of questions for contemporary Māori culture. There are concerns around data sovereignty - protection against the harvesting of knowledge - and  AI's perceived lack of mauri and wairua, the essence and spirit that give life to Māori traditions. Views vary in Aotearoa on the potential machine tools offer for cultural revitalisation versus their lack of depth. 

Joining Mark Amery on Culture 101 are two artists leading discussion at the symposium,  Julian Oliver and Eugene Hanson. 

Eugene Hansen (Maniapoto) is a senior lecturer at Massey University’s Whiti o Rehua School of Art, Wellington. Focusing on co-authoring and working collaboratively, Hansen attributes his interest in collaboration to growing up in a remote, rural Māori community where “cultural production was modelled as an inherently collaborative embracing of mātauranga Māori.”

New Zealand artist, activist and critical engineer Julian Oliver works widely internationally and for many years has been concerned with the opening up of technology for communities beyond the control of multinational companies.  

Oliver’s artworks are concerned with both the threat and liberation technology provides and he has also worked as an Interface and expanded reality designer, open software programmer, and educator. 

Many of Oliver’s recent projects have centred on tools to respond to the climate emergency for activist groups internationally.  The winner of the distinguished Golden Nica at Prix Ars Electronica 2011 (with Daniil Vasiliev), he now lives in Upper Hutt after many years based in Berlin.

While Julian Oliver launched the symposium on Saturday with a keynote address laying out the current state-of-play of AI, Eugene Hansen convened a panel on AI’s implications for contemporary Māori arts.

Julian Oliver's The Closed World will be available to view 5.30-9.30pm Thursday 30 May to Saturday 1 June on the Vogelmorn Green, 93 Mornington Road, Brooklyn.